Thursday, 10 October, 2019
I don’t have to go very far to see how much things are changing in London. Right here in Hackney the amount of regeneration and repurposing is enormous. Last week, Liz (my sister-in-law) gave me a back-handed (or something) compliment. She said that she really enjoyed my blog, the Hackney one, and I made it look really nice, much better than it really was. I thanked her and thought, huh?
The fact is that Hackney isn’t all nice. It’s a long-deprived neighbourhood where crime and vandalism and neglect were the norm when I first arrived here. I’m sure it’s still there but…Hackney is a huge borough. This little bit of it has a lot of old, rundown parts, mixed in with the regenerated new parts, mixed in with the very urban parts, mixed in with the fields and parks. There’s ugly and there’s beautiful. It all adds in to the whole.
There’s the suprising little living wall made in front of the abandoned pizza shop. I mentioned it in my Everyday Life in Hackney blog post. It’s coming along so well. It’s a great example of repurposing, taking something that’s just sitting there and making good use of it.
There’s a little street by where I live. When I moved here it was a rundown street with a derelict factory on one side. Then the builders showed up. They didn’t pull the factory down but made it into a fancy apartment building. I’ve been looking at that road in the last week or so and today I went to look a bit closer. It’s not looking quite as sparkly as it did when it first got its new face, but it’s interesting to see nevertheless.
At the end of the road there’s a sort of road that runs perpendicular all along the railway bridge. It’s really just a back alley with railway arches but in the last several years there has been construction. More fancy flats on one side, facing the arches. When they started to build here, I was shocked. These back alleys along the railway arches are scary. They’re dark and they’re away from the main traffic. I told Krish that I didn’t think anyone would want to live there. Walking home at night would just be too frightening and why would people buy expensive flats on such a derelict road. But they have.
I know I’ve talked about railway arches. London uses every space it has. Across the city where there are railway arches there are shops of all kinds built into the space the arch has provided. In many areas these are trendy restaurants and shops but in my neighbourhood, they are little manufactures, businesses and, in this case, body shop after body shop. (That’s auto repair shops for the Brits reading this.)
Opposite the pristine fancy flats are the decrepit arches body shops.
There was a bit of an argument going on between some customers and an owner so I held back a bit and hid my camera. Hackney still has its seedy side and I’m aware of it. One day, while taking a photo from across the road to these arches, a man started to yell at me, ‘Did you take my photo?’ I yelled back, ‘No.’ He persisted and, I have to say, I did start to feel unsafe. I stood my ground and told him he was welcome to come see the photo for himself. He backed off. I’ve not forgotten that day!
And I’ve not forgotten the lovely wall art that used to be along these arches. Painted over and lost forever.
At the end of the alley, which curves slightly, you’re back to the main road again where I live. On my side are the body shop arches, on the other are little manufacturers.
Just at the junction are more repurposed buildings and regenerations. Within a small space so much has been done to make use of everything.
Hackney is a bit crazy, a bit unexpected. It’s home.
This video shows the day that a woman came out of her flat by the arches to let a shouter know just what she thought of her antics. I hadn’t lived here long and this moment painted a great picture for me of life in my neighbourhood.
